Archive for the ‘Portugal’ Category

Jeanne Balibar is the funny-faced actress best known from some of Jaques Rivette’s later films and Olivier Assayas’s Fin aout, debut septembre. Like many French performers, she also fancies herself a bit of a singer. Pedro Costa’s documentary highlights her collaboration with indie musician Rodolphe Burger.

Summertime and the living is easy in Portugal, where a family folk group head to the Pardieros festival to perform. The charm is a little deceitful in Miguel Gomes’s film, which begins as a documentary and then plays a dramatic hand. Its Cannes screening inspired both walkouts and lavish praise, with comparisons made to Jia Zhangke and Abbas Kiarostami. Not bad going.

It’s love at first sight for the young man who sees the blonde across the way. Does that mean their love can work? Now 100, Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira takes the long view. Based on a short story by Eca de Queiroz.